A security guard views a bank of eight monitors on his desk. The perspective of the image is from behind the security guard so that the various parts of a building's interior is visible on the monitors.
October 20, 2025
Like radar, a brain wave sweeps a cortical region to read out information held in working memory
Six panels show circular arrangements of each individual cell type in a miBrain culture, stained in cyan. The cell types are Pericytes, Astrocytes, Endothelial Cells, Neurons, Oligodendroglia, and Microglia
October 17, 2025
MIT invents human brain model with six major cell types to enable personalized disease research, drug discovery
An array of six panels shows different views of a long, thin, spiny structure that closely resembles a bumpy twig. Each is stained bright green and the degree of bumpiness varies along each one.
October 16, 2025
Study finds circular RNA helps drive brain development
Two stacked electron microscope images show a synapse. Above a small, river-like gap is a dark T shape among many tiny bubble-like circles. In the bottom image the T shape is much bigger than in the upper image.
October 14, 2025
Neural activity helps circuit connections mature into optimal signal transmitters
The almond shape of the amygdala is composed of cells stained red (on the left) and green (on the right).
September 29, 2025
Many Mechanisms of Mood

A simple animal’s response to sickness highlights the nervous system’s surprising degrees of flexibility

April 8, 2025
Research Findings
Upon infection, the C. elegans worm reshuffles the roles of brain cells and flips the functions of some of the chemicals it uses to regulate behavior.

Molecules that fight infection also act on the brain, inducing anxiety or sociability

April 7, 2025
Research Findings
New research on a cytokine called IL-17 adds to growing evidence that immune molecules can influence behavior during illness.

Gloria Choi earns Samsung Ho-Am Prize for Medicine

April 2, 2025
Picower People
Honor recognizes Choi’s research on connections between the immune and central nervous systems and their relevance to autism and other disorders

A neuron’s neighbors

March 14, 2025
Research Feature
The field is called neuroscience, but neurons alone can’t operate your brain. Research is revealing how non-neural cells indispensably contribute to function, and why their roles can make them promising treatment targets in disease.

Review: Evidence expanding that 40Hz gamma stimulation promotes brain health

March 3, 2025
A decade of studies from labs around the world provide a growing evidence base that increasing the power of the brain’s gamma rhythms could help fight Alzheimer’s, and perhaps other, neurological diseases.

Study suggests new molecular strategy for treating fragile X syndrome

February 20, 2025
Research Findings
Enhancing activity of a specific component of ‘NMDA’ receptors normalized protein synthesis, neural activity and seizure susceptibility in hippocampus of fragile X lab mice

Even after learning the right idea, humans and animals still seem to test other approaches, study suggests

February 18, 2025
Research Findings
New research adds evidence that learning a successful strategy for approaching a task doesn’t prevent further exploration, even if it reduces performance.

MIT method enables ultrafast protein labeling of tens of millions of densely packed cells in organ-scale tissues

January 24, 2025
Research Findings
Tissue processing advance can label proteins at the level of individual cells across whole, intact rodent brains and other large samples just as fast and uniformly as in dissociated single cells.

Emery N. Brown, innovative neuroscientist, statistician and anesthesiologist earns National Medal of Science

January 3, 2025
Picower People
President Biden bestowed the nation’s highest scientific honor on Brown, fellow winners, at a White House ceremony.

From Molecules to Memory

December 20, 2024
Research Feature
On a biological foundation of ions and proteins, the brain forms, stores, and retrieves memories to inform intelligent behavior

Study suggests how the brain, with sleep, learns meaningful maps of spaces

December 10, 2024
Research Findings
Place cells are well known to encode individual locations, but new experiments and analysis indicate that stitching together a “cognitive map” of a whole environment requires a broader ensemble of cells, aided by sleep, to build a richer network over seve

New autism research projects represent a broad range of approaches to achieving a shared goal

November 21, 2024
Recent Events
At a symposium of the Simons Center for the Social Brain, six speakers described a diversity of recently launched studies aimed at improving understanding of the autistic brain.